"If You Want To Win..., Just Control The Voting Machines" from 1/03

[Atman]

We were warned. *sigh*

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"If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines"

by Thom Hartmann


Maybe Nebraska Republican Chuck Hagel honestly won two US Senate elections. Maybe it's true that the citizens of Georgia simply decided that incumbent Democratic Senator Max Cleland, a wildly popular war veteran who lost three limbs in Vietnam, was, as his successful Republican challenger suggested in his campaign ads, too unpatriotic to remain in the Senate. Maybe George W. Bush, Alabama's new Republican governor Bob Riley, and a small but congressionally decisive handful of other long-shot Republican candidates really did win those states where conventional wisdom and straw polls showed them losing in the last few election cycles.

Perhaps, after a half-century of fine-tuning exit polling to such a science that it's now sometimes used to verify how clean elections are in Third World countries, it really did suddenly become inaccurate in the United States in the past six years and just won't work here anymore. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that the sudden rise of inaccurate exit polls happened around the same time corporate-programmed, computer-controlled, modem-capable voting machines began recording and tabulating ballots.

But if any of this is true, there's not much of a paper trail from the voters' hand to prove it.

You'd think in an open democracy that the government - answerable to all its citizens rather than a handful of corporate officers and stockholders - would program, repair, and control the voting machines. You'd think the computers that handle our cherished ballots would be open and their software and programming available for public scrutiny. You'd think there would be a paper trail of the vote, which could be followed and audited if a there was evidence of voting fraud or if exit polls disagreed with computerized vote counts.

You'd be wrong.

<snip>

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm">Thom Hartmann wrote this in JANUARY 03



1st Amendment Shoppe

[Gman]

1. Yeah, you would think

but this is no longer the greatest democracy in the world. The saddest thing of all is the people doing it may well be convinced they're doing it in the name of God.

[The Doctor.]

5. Yes... they think they are 'saving' us....

I intimately understand just what lengths small-minded 'saviors' will go to to 'save their country'.

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. What would be the civil action on something like this?

fraud would be too simple. Doesn't this border on treason?

[dewaldd]

6. Border on treason? I think it defines it.

[Jack_Dawson]

3. And yet, People Don't Care

Just give them their football, potato chips and Paris Hilton. I guess it really will have to be The Draft that wakes the sheeple up.

[The Doctor.]

8. Even at this very moment...

they are considering how to 'frame' the draft to be acceptable...

If they can't think of an answer, I'm sure a 3k nuke will do the trick.

[dewaldd]

4. A friend assuaged my fears, saying the exit polls would show fraud

what she didn't realize is that Rove would then just smear the exit polls

[Timbuk3]

7. Olberman on Ohio

Votes, Steroids, and Shoes

NEW YORK - It’s not exactly Zola’s “J’Accuse.” In fact it seems to have been written entirely in Congressionalese.

But anybody seeking the proverbial laundry list of all the complaints, questions, and oddities of Election Night in Ohio is referred to the fifteen-page letter sent Thursday to Ohio’s Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, over the signatures of twelve of the fifteen Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee.

The document is so calm as to almost neuter the implications of the 34 specific questions John Conyers and his associates pose. It was not composed by a political firebrand. It does not invoke the Cuyahoga County “super voting” precinct numbers, since explained as amateurish accounting rather than political perfidy. Curiously, it does echo John Kerry’s ambiguous on-line statement. “We are sure you agree with us that regardless of the outcome of the election…”

More: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

The first letter: http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/ohblackwellltr12204.pdf

The second letter: http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/ohblackwellfollowupltr12304.pdf

And an op-ed from Bush's home town paper:

Ohio — Ground Zero

The spirit of freedom is essential to the American character.

Some experience it with but a mere twinkle in the eye, while others wear it like a chip on their shoulders. Yet there are those who choose to reject the spirit of democracy for myopic greedier pastures. They would discard the creation of Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin as immaterial and no longer relevant in a world being redefined by a neo-conservative mold in which Americans act according to government policy, speak according to government propaganda, and think as the government dictates.

During the month of December, Ohio has become ground zero, where rests the survival of democracy as we know it, for this will be the test of whether America will stand for an election riddled with irregularities. The test will determine if the true spirit of honest elections will continue to exist in America or if honesty, like respect and cooperation, has become a dinosaur.

Although the battleground in Ohio might be described as one of abstraction, lacking the smoke-filled sea of asbestos and lead that was ever present at ground zero in New York, its pungency is just as caustic because this battle will determine whether democracy will gasp its last or reign as an icon of truth.

Although some Ohioans might applaud Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell’s fascist sorcery to make impossible a manual recount in time for the Electoral College elite to cast their votes, citizens of the United States from coast to coast condemn it. Take heed. This is not merely an election issue isolated to the state of Ohio. Ohio is not an island.

That state’s decisive posture on the Electoral College makes this a national referendum.

Those championing honest elections look upon slimy efforts to disintegrate the ghost of freedom as abhorrent. Many are joining forces through rallies, marches, and protests to educate America of the potential flight of truth. At the same time, they are extending their voices into Ohio as they descend upon ground zero to attempt to clean up the mess created by election irregularities that are too numerous to even remotely be considered accidental.

The Iconoclast applauds the initiatives of the freedom-fighters who with substantial courage are standing up for rights that would normally be taken for granted. We encourage others to pitch in and help, to be heard, to take back what has been stolen, for this theft carries the stain of treason.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson is one among thousands seeking the truth. “We want to know how deep this pattern goes,” Jackson said. “We have been continuing to pursue the outcome of the election with disturbing findings. ... We want a full investigation of these irregularities,” he said Sunday.
The time is now to draw a line in the sand — to give not one inch, one millimeter, one vote toward the cause of skewing this election. This recount, no matter the outcome, conducted properly, is a necessity for democracy to prevail. Without it, America can never trust another election.

http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/Columns/Editorial/editorial48.htm

[truehawk]

9. Wonderfully apt words from the Iconoclast. Thanks n/t